Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Press Release: The Frauds of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ Exposed by New CAMERA Web Site

CAMERA – Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

For Immediate Release

March 3, 2010

Contact: Andrea Levin or Maxime Myer-Smith, 1 617 789-3672

The Frauds of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ Exposed by New CAMERA Web Site

Boston, Mass. (March 2) – The fraudulent claims, factual errors, false analogies and outright hypocrisy of “Israel Apartheid Week” — actually a two-week hate fest being promoted on college campuses — are exposed at “Apartheid Week – A Campaign Against Human Rights.” Created by CAMERA, the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, “A Campaign Against Human Rights” can be found at the top right corner of the news media watchdog’s home page, www.camera.org. The direct link is http://www.israeliapartheidweek.com/default.asp.

“‘Israel Apartheid Week’ grew out of the anti-Western, at times antisemitic 2001 U.N. conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa. Unable to destroy the Jewish state by conventional military means, such as the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, or through terrorism — including the ‘al-Aqsa intifada’ that erupted in 2000 after the Palestinians rejected the Israeli-U.S. offer of a West Bank and Gaza Strip state in exchange for peace — Israel’s enemies adopted the so-called ‘boycott, disinvestment, sanction’ strategy, or BDS,” CAMERA’s national president and executive director Andrea Levin explained. “‘Israel Apartheid Week’ on college campuses each March has become a key part of this BDS attempt at delegitimizing Israel.

“Obviously,” Levin said, “it has nothing to do with fact. Israeli Arabs enjoy full equality with Israeli Jews, some serving, for example, as members of Knesset [parliament], diplomats, judges and generals. ‘Israel Apartheid Week’s’ attempt to tar the Jewish state as a twin of the old South Africa, in which a white ruling minority harshly suppressed the black majority through discriminatory laws and outright force, is a Nazi-like ‘big lie’ propaganda exercise. Based on falsehood, it attempts to convince by incessant repetition.”

Concise subsections deal with the truth about Israel as a vibrant, multi-racial and multi-cultural Western-style democracy — the only one in the Arab-Islamic Middle East. They illuminate the extremism behind “Israel Apartheid Week”; the double standard that insists only Jewish nationalism, but not French, Irish, Danish or any other is inherently racist; and the gender, religious and ethnic apartheid practiced by many Arab countries but hypocritically ignored by the BDS campaign.

Also included are related quotations from authorities including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in praise of Israel as an outpost of democracy and former Sudanese child slave and human rights activist Simon Deng contrasting minority equality in Israel with the real racial oppression of apartheid South Africa. In addition, CAMERA’s “Apartheid Week: A Campaign Against Human Rights” provides links to other postings, among them exposes’ of notorious anti-Israel speakers.

CAMERA, a non-profit, educational organization, has approximately 65,000 members in the United States and 12 other countries. It works for accurate, balanced and complete news media coverage of Israel and the rest of the Middle East. It promotes journalistic accountability and takes no political position on agreed, negotiated solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.